There exists a vehicle such as a convertible automobile having a roof opening/closing apparatus, which includes a roof structured with two panels. Such two panels are aligned in a longitudinal direction of the vehicle when an upper portion of a vehicle compartment is covered with the roof. Further, the panels can be folded and moved towards a luggage compartment provided at a back portion of the vehicle so as to be accommodated therein.
Such roof opening/closing apparatus includes a supporting apparatus for supporting the two panels, a front lock mechanism and a rear lock mechanism. The front lock mechanism locks one of the panels (front panel), which is located at the front side of the other panel (rear panel), to a vehicle body when the roof is located at a position for covering the upper portion of the vehicle compartment (hereinafter, referred to as extended position). The rear lock mechanism locks the supporting apparatus for maintaining a state where the two panels are longitudinally aligned when the roof is located at the extended position. The front lock mechanism and rear lock mechanism is connected to each other by means of a flexible cable. Therefore, the front and rear lock mechanisms are operated to simultaneously cooperate to unlock when moving the roof towards a position at which the roof is retracted to be accommodated in the luggage compartment. (hereinafter, referred to as retracted position).
According to an apparatus disclosed in JP3349410B (hereinafter, referred to as reference 1), the front lock mechanism is fixedly attached at the front panel, and the rear lock mechanism is fixedly attached at the rear panel.
Further, according to an apparatus disclosed in JP2005-145303A (hereinafter, referred to as reference 2), for example, a roof structured with three panels and moved between the extended position and the retracted position, has been proposed.
According to the apparatus for operating the roof structured with the two panels to move for opening and closing the upper portion of the vehicle compartment, which is disclosed in the reference 1, the cable serving as a connecting member for connecting the front and rear lock mechanisms is bent when the front and rear panels are folded. Therefore, so as not to be damaged even by being bent repeatedly, the cable is required to be loosely arranged between the front and rear lock mechanism in a manner where the cable is widely curved. Therefore, a sufficiently wide space is required to accommodate the curved (bent) cable. Further, a design for preventing interference of the cable with other portions of the vehicle is also required.
Still further, because the front and rear lock mechanism are operatively connected and operated in association with each other, balance of an assembling between the front and rear panel and an assembling between those panels and the vehicle body is required to be adjusted in an assembling process of the vehicle. Thus, the assembling of those members to the vehicle may be complicated.
A need thus exists for a roof opening/closing apparatus, which is not susceptible to the drawback mentioned above.